Dame of Swords

January 27, 2017

This is not your regular blogger. This is… never mind who I am. My house has been invaded by a gang of pretentious fortune tellers who keep leaving these cards all over the place, and also books and art supplies and crumbs from jammy dodger cookies. One of the intruders has an outdoor cat who murders my neighbourhood’s most annoying songbirds, and now we have ghost birds that won’t leave me alone.

So now I’m stealing their blog. Mwahahaha!

I’ll be honest, the cards and books are pretty great. The history alone is impressive. There was this Italian family in the fifteenth century, the Visconti-Sforzas, who commissioned at least fifteen tarot decks, hand painted, many of them covered in gold. They also collected custom chess sets and pogs, but those fell through the cracks among other legendary collectables like the Maltese Falcon and the Late Fees Record of Alexandria.

What makes the Visconti-Sforza decks cool (besides, you know, being covered in gold) is that one of them has extra court cards, the Dames (female knights) and the Damsels (all the single ladies, all the single ladies) giving the deck some much-needed gender equality.

Here’s one of those cards and (from what my uninvited guests say) its meaning:

Placement: Minor Arcana

Description: A woman in a cool dress and hair like a helmet glances behind her with an annoyed expression while she and her adorable pony continue trotting forward.

Right Side Up:

Why are we still fighting for equal opportunities and rights over our bodies? We did this already. Come on people, we’ve been making great strides and… wait, where’d you go?

What? No! Wrong way! We’ll be run over by massive fifteenth-century carts with lift kits and fake nuts tied to the back!

You want a fight, we’ll give you a fight. Chaaaaaarge!

Upside Down:

Really? The rich European lady’s going to lead the charge? Did she pull out her sword in solidarity with other vulnerable communities who were under attack in the fifteenth century, or did she turn a blind eye until she saw it happening to other rich European ladies like herself? Sure, we’ll march together because we need the numbers, but afterwards, we need to have a chat.

Classic Dame of Swords deaths:

Uh… nope. I “live” with ghosts. If I list a bunch of thematically-appropriate funny ways to die, they’re going to give me an earful for, like, the rest of eternity.